Coastal landscapes that have been drained for agriculture or other land-uses may provide additional blue carbon storage and sequestration if tides are restored. Potential blue carbon services were mapped across NSW coastal landscapes and maps identified more blue carbon opportunities in northern NSW than southern NSW. Blue carbon services above instream barriers were identified and prioritised for restoration. Restoration may be achieved using carbon market methodologies, such as Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund, and restoration will serve to provide multiple co-benefits.

The Lake Eyre Basin is one of the world’s largest free-flowing rivers, largely unaffected by dams and river regulation. We overlayed the distribution of oil and gas production wells and infrastructure across the floodplains to assess potential impacts on the system’s freshwater ecosystems. We also examined the distribution of potential future developments, likely to be unconventional gas production, with more serious environmental impacts.

Coastal bays have supported human communities for millennia. Their effective management and restoration remains a challenge, in part as a result of human impacts that occurred before scientific studies. This review examines the historical ecology of bays and the tools and techniques used to discover environmental change to support effective management and restoration.

In the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia, policy-makers have implemented a program that attempts to use environmental water more effectively, allowing more water to be allocated for human uses. This program must be rigorously evaluated to ensure that the environmental benefits are not overstated. We provide a critique of the legislated method for evaluation, highlighting flaws and recommending improvements.

Wetlands need to be considered in their landscape context, in context of relationships that people have with them, and how societies are organised around them. This perspective highlights relational values of wetlands, most often expressed by Indigenous and local communities, where attachments to places yield understandings and responsibilities for policy. (Warning: this article contains the name of deceased Aboriginal person.)